Honey tasting raises bee awareness

Picnic Day event helps draw attention to delight of honey and plight of bees.

May 15, 2014

(from The Sacramento Bee)

“Pollination Day” is proving to be a popular event at UC Davis.

Hosted by the Honey and Pollination Center, part of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, the event drew a healthy crowd as part of the annual Picnic Day celebration.

“We had so many people line up for tastings last year, we decided to double our tasting stations,” said Amina Harris, the center’s director, in a recent article in The Sacramento Bee.

The story notes how important honey bees are to California agriculture, pollinating more than 130 crops, and also how a problem known as colony collapse disorder has taken a heavy toll.

“We’ve had 30-percent loss (of the hives) every single year,” Harris said.

She also said people should stop spraying pesticides and herbicides in their gardens if they want to help bees.

(Read the full story by Debbie Arrington, April 25, 2014, published in The Sacramento Bee.)

Additional information:

In a related story about the Honey and Pollination Center, the Sacramento Bee’s food critic Blair Anthony Robertson talks about his experience on a honey tasting panel that is helping create a flavor and aroma wheel similar to one developed at UC Davis to identify aromas in wine.